Homesickness: Yearning in the Soul
Homesick, a feeling I have known all too well being a military spouse. I have been married to my husband for 16 years, this February, and the whole time has been with him during his military career. During this time, I have had to go through delivering our children while he was deployed, dealing with COVID lockdown with him gone, hurricanes, sickness, miscarriages, kids, and college at the same time. You name it, I endured it in this life and usually alone. My husband has been a great support and is there as much as he could be, but military life had him traveling often. While I am so grateful for this life God and my husband have provided it also made me truly experience loneliness at a different level.
Whether homesick for a place or a person the feeling of emptiness and sadness can be overwhelming—longing and a feeling that can be hard to describe. In all of this, I've discovered there is no such homesickness as when your soul isn’t healed when you aren’t connected to God. Have you ever felt like something was missing in life? As if you know there is something or somewhere you’re missing just soul-deep, but just can’t figure out exactly what or where that is? My experience has shown me that this feeling is a feeling only God could fill. I have felt the disconnect from God and I’ve also experienced the Spirit filling my soul’s home with such love and fullness of joy that nothing, but tears can be said.
I grew up in the same house most of my life with pretty much the same group of friends through grade school. Sameness was a familiarity to me. I could pretty much tell you my day-to-day and only once in a great while was there any difference in that. Looking for the routine and the familiarity in life has become my norm. After I graduated high school my husband and I decided to get married after we went through a deployment together. For thirteen years I was away from my home in Ohio and lived in North Carolina among other places. For thirteen years I had to learn what it meant to truly be alone and away from everything I know. Watching my old life move on without me and trying to understand where home is now was something I truly struggled with for a long time. Not only did I leave my life I left God too. The biggest surprise I have found is God has never left me. My leaving pulled me in a direction far from God where I thought he wanted nothing to do with me. Time and patience have shown He has always been waiting for me to come back or call out to Him to find me when I can’t find myself.
This brings me to think of the book of Ezekiel. While this isn’t normally a homesick style of book, I couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming feeling of homesickness when reading about this priest and prophet bearing the sins of Jerusalem and Israel one side of his body for 390 days and the other side for 40 days. (Ezekiel 4). Can you imagine? When we are bearing sins, we are the furthest from God we can be, and boy that feeling of emptiness I wouldn’t wish on anybody! For Ezekiel to be alone this long and away from God just broke my heart. Not only do we witness God’s heart being crushed by the betrayal of His people, but we also see Ezekiel suffering for the sins of his brothers. The true tragedy in the story is God and His people, including Ezekiel, dealing with hurt in different forms to the point of hurting so deeply in the soul. The idea of seeing Ezekiel bear the sins Jesus ultimately beares for all of us is such an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the selflessness, but also appreciation to see such love for people to give them a new reality. Reading through the ministry of Ezekiel brings us to when God tells him that he will be the one to look for His people.
Ezekiel 34:11,15-16, “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them. I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares, the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.”
Knowing when we’re struggling with homesickness in any sense God is near us. Not only do we learn that in Ezekiel throughout His Word He reminds us of that. Isaiah 66:13, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.” Our home is always with the Lord.
Remember God is always your home. Lean on Him and He will listen and comfort. Colossians 3:16 reminds us, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
My prayer is that this week this helps someone who struggles with being alone and who doesn’t know exactly where home is at the moment. Let God be that. Let that be someone whom God sends to help bear that loneliness.
Until next time,
Kristen A.
